


Smile for Me

by CinderScoria



Series: her name is jade [3]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Gen, just bonding, so no spoilers, takes place between the second and third mission of season one, very slow and reluctant bonding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 17:34:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CinderScoria/pseuds/CinderScoria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Five aren’t quite friends. Sam is fine with that. Five, evidently, is not. Or, that time Sam and Runner Five went on a midnight adventure and Janine grounded Sam for life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the figure in the window

**Author's Note:**

> Ahh, this isn't finished. I completely forgot I had it. Maybe one day.
> 
> I should note that I wrote this not knowing about the 5k training app, so... my bad?

Sam wasn’t quite sure what to make of their new Runner. He saw her sometimes wandering around Abel, especially at night, scanning the walls like she was searching for something. She never spoke, and her thick lips were often pulled taut like she’d sucked on something sour. Sam had seen his fair share of pessimistic reactions to the apocalypse, but this child was the most bitter person he’d ever met. In the week and a half she’d been in the Township, he had not once seen her smile.

It didn’t matter much, he told himself. Soon as she did her business she would return to Mullins and they would be done with her.

He stared at his ceiling like it would hold the answers to the universe. It was too dark to count the boards in the shack. Too dark to see anything, really, though Alice’s face kept swimming in front of his eyes. He compared her to this new Runner Five. Alice’s honey brown eyes where—and what even was her name?—Five’s were coal black. Freckles on Alice’s warm, cream-colored cheeks instead of the cool, smooth caramel of this Five’s. Alice’s ready smile and Five’s clenched jaw and angry, slanted eyes.

Five wasn’t Alice. Sam kind of hated her for that, which was irrational and unfair, he knew, but… He’d waited weeks for Alice to come back. She did. As a zombie. How many times had he dreamed that? Those nightmares that visited him for days, imagining what she’d look like with her strawberry blonde hair separated halfway down her scalp, blood caking the side of her face, limping towards him with full intent on eating his brain?

Sam shuddered and turned over in his bed. He stared at the wall for a few moments before sighing, sitting up, and swinging his legs over the side. He’d been going for walks late at night these past weeks. Janine had even picked up on the dark bruises beneath his eyes, expressing concern in her clipped, rude, socially inept way. Sam had brushed her off, and then Maxine when Janine tattled on him. He was fine, just not sleeping. Yes, he could continue doing his job. No, he did not need time off.

The night was quiet and icy cold in November wind. Sam pulled the hood of his jacket up and fixed his crooked glasses, heading towards the perimeter. Abel was small, but not that small. He’d make a circuit or two and see if that did the trick. His watch said it was only eleven. Sam exhaled and watched his breath go up in a puff of evaporation. He tilted his head back and took in the stars. Pretty incredible view. How odd that the world was still turning even though down here it might as well have been ending.

He made it to the communications shack when a hand reached out and clamped over his mouth, stifling a cry of alarm as it yanked him backwards and into the shadows. Windmilling and squawking muffled protests, Sam twisted until he was staring straight into the face of the new Runner Five. He pulled himself from her grasp.

“Are you insane—”

She cut him off with a finger to his lips, barely sparing him a second glance as she peered around the corner of the shack. Her hair was out of its usual braid, instead pulled into a tight bun at the top of her head. Her glasses were on, which was unusual—when she ran she tucked them away, so he was used to seeing her eyes unobscured. She looked a lot more bookish this way, like a librarian. Well, if a librarian was a scowling, mute teenager.

Sam inched towards the edge to see what she was looking at. Five gave him a gentle slap on the shoulder with the back of her hand. When he glared at her, she glared back and motioned with her head for him to follow her.

As much as Sam hated being ordered around by a girl like five years younger than him, he stuck with her as she darted around the other side of the building, stopping when she pointed off towards the greenhouse. At first Sam didn’t see what was wrong. Then he spotted a figure crouched at the window, easing the glass up so they could slip inside without making a single noise.

Sam gave Five an incredulous look. “This is what you’ve been doing wandering around at night? Stalking people?”

The girl wrinkled her nose at him and rolled her eyes. Sam didn’t understand why talking was so difficult for her. Still, he could decipher what she was saying, more or less. It wasn’t hard to imagine she took offense to his accusation.

“Who is it?” he wondered as Five stared intently at the window.

Five shrugged, and then pointed. The figure was coming out of the greenhouse. Clenched in their hands was a bag, but it was too dark to see who it was or what they’d taken. The figure looked around, not spotting Five and Sam hugging the shack’s shadows, before darting off towards the hospital.

Sam caught Five’s arm as she went to follow. “What are you doing? We need to get Janine. This could be serious, they could be stealing food, or worse!”

He received a glacial look that told him if he didn’t let go Five was going to feed him to the zombies herself. Sam let go of her arm. “We have to tell someone,” he insisted.

Five arched an eyebrow at him before looking impatiently towards where the figure had disappeared. Her frown said, “I’m telling you, aren’t I?”

Or at least Sam though it did. He rubbed his forehead. “This is a bad idea.”

Another roll of the eyes, another pull at the lips that might have been a smirk or might have been a sneer. Sam sighed. “Yes, I do have to come with you. This could be dangerous.”

Five just handed him a droll stare, like she thought he was being dramatic, before jogging off after the figure. Sam groaned aloud. On one hand, Janine or one of the soldiers needed to be informed. But they didn’t know who it was stealing… whatever it was they were stealing. And he couldn’t just leave Five to confront them. They had enough to worry about without adding potential traitors to the mix.

Janine would probably be sleeping, he reasoned. Sam didn’t like it, but he followed Five anyway.


	2. let the doctor in

Sam wasn’t going to deny that he broke the rules often and with reckless abandon—that was how he got his job, after all. But this… this was a little ridiculous.

“It’s probably no one,” he babbled to Five’s back as she darted, crouched over low, to the side of the hospital. “It’s probably just someone starting a late night… gardening club?” His already weak voice trailed off when Five shot him a skeptical look over her shoulder. “Okay, then, what other explanation could there be?”

Five shrugged. Again with the avoiding actual conversation. Sam wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her. None of this was making any sense.

The outer lights of what served as their hospital—one of the few buildings they didn’t have to build by hand—flickered and sputtered, giving the night an eerie atmosphere. Sam already had plenty of reasons to be wary of the dark, of night in particular, but he’d always felt safe in Abel. Not now, though. Now they had a possible intruder, one who was stealing plants for God knew why.

And he and some random teenager from Mullins were going to track them down. His mother would be horrified.

Five pressed herself to the wall of the hospital, face turned towards the window. It’d been left open a crack, like entering and exiting through the front door was forbidden on all counts and punishable by death. Sam resumed muttering to himself as the dark-skinned teen stuck her head through the window and then slipped inside with ease that told Sam she’d probably done this before.

Sam fretted a second before she opened it again for him, beckoning for him to come inside. He gave her an agonized look. “Are you sure we shouldn’t go get someone? Seven, maybe?”

She stared at him and very slowly raised her left brow. Sam suppressed a groan. “All right, all right, I’m coming. But if we make it out of this alive, you and I are going to have a long conversation about your disturbing lack of self preservation instinct.”

That actually got a snort out of her. She turned around before he could tell if she was smiling or not. Sam pushed his glasses further up his nose and perched on the windowsill, pulling himself through the opening and barely catching himself before gravity could send him crashing to the ground.

“We should find Maxine,” he said as he dusted himself off. “At least give her a warning that someone could be stealing supplies.” He looked up, frowning as he scanned the room. It was a dark storage room that looked like it’d been turned into an office, with no lights save for the lamps flickering outside the window.

“Five?” he whispered into the gloom, squinting at the shadows. One of them moved, revealing the teen by the glint of her glasses and a flash of teeth that looked more feral than amused. He hadn’t seen her blended into the darkness like that, what with her dark skin and hair and clothes. The only light she emanated came from the glow-in-the-dark watch fastened to her wrist, partially obscured by her jacket’s long sleeves.

“Good camouflage,” he noted, and Five nodded back at him. He wasn’t sure if that was a thank you or a “right back at you.” Probably the former. He was clad in nothing but flannel pajama bottoms and a faded orange sweatshirt professing his love for Queen.

Five crossed the room with purpose, easing the door open so she could press her eyes to the crack. Satisfied that no one would jump out at her, she exited the room and pulled Sam out by his elbow. The hallway was dimmed because it was, in fact, very late at night, but it made the shadows grow on the walls, giving off a creepy, haunted feel. Sam had been in here plenty of times—to talk to Maxine, not because he was the most accident prone person on the planet—but never at night, and never in a situation where sneaking was imperative if he wanted to stay alive.

He tapped Five on the shoulder. “Maxine,” he reminded her. She frowned at him, shrugging her shoulders and looking down and up the hall with a slightly frustrated expression. It took Sam a few seconds to decipher that one.

“She’s either in the labs or sleeping,” Sam said. “I’ll go find her. You… um, do whatever it is you were going to do.”

Ooh, she definitely didn’t like that idea. Five cut her eyes to him so fast he took a step backwards. “It’ll be fine,” he insisted. “You’re not the only one who knows how to evade baddies. And anyway, it’s not like that many people listen to the curfew. If I get caught, I’ll just say I was looking for Maxine. Not actually a lie, so, there you go.”

She held the glare on him for a second before rolling her eyes to the ceiling. She squeezed his elbow once, the clearest be careful he’d ever interpreted from her, and disappeared down the hall.

Sam stood where he was for a second before turning and heading in the opposite direction. Find Maxine, raise the alarm, go back round and find Five before the girl did something irreversible. Easy as pie.

He found Maxine without too much trouble. He’d been correct in assuming she was up in the lab, poring over the documents Five had brought in when she first came here. Sam had been shooed away when he asked for a peek, so he knew better than to ask how it was going now. Besides, they had bigger things to worry about.

“Ah, Maxine?” he called, tapping the door with his knuckles. She looked up and pushed her curls back from her face. There were dark circles under her eyes. Sam frowned in disapproval, but that conversation could wait until later.

“Sam, what are you doing up?” Maxine said in surprise, gathering the documents and sliding them back into their files. “It’s past curfew.”

“We have a problem,” Sam said. “Probably.”

She tensed. “Like…?”

“Well,” Sam hedged, and maybe this really wasn’t a good idea because whoever was sneaking out of the greenhouse possibly had a perfectly innocent reason to be doing so. But he’d piqued Maxine’s interest now, and there really wasn’t any going back. “Five and I saw somebody sneaking out of the greenhouse. With a bag full of… something. And they went into the hospital. And we don’t know what they’re up to, but Five seems to think it’s no good. I told her it’s probably nothing, but apparently she’s like a dog with a bone when it comes to these sort of things.”

Maxine’s eyebrows climbed. “You and Five? Since when are you two buddy buddy?”

“We’re not,” Sam protested, a little grumpily. “I went for a walk and she was doing that weird sneaky thing she does and—why are we talking about this, we could have a thief in our midst. Shouldn’t we tell somebody?”

“I’m sure it’s not a thief,” Maxine assured him. “We haven’t had any new people except for the new Runner, and we haven’t had issues with it before. We should go see who it is before we jump to conclusions.” She peered behind him. “And where is Runner Five?”

Sam shrugged. “I didn’t ask where she was going. Don’t think she would’ve answered me if I had, frankly. She doesn’t talk much, does she?”

“I suppose not.” Maxine said it in a way that implied she knew something he didn’t. Sam peered suspiciously at her, but she was already locking the papers into a small safe in the corner and shrugging out of her lab coat.

“Shall we?” she prodded when she was done, slipping out the door before Sam could answer.

Sam got the feeling she was humoring him. He sighed and followed.


End file.
